Paperboy/Rampage

Two classics jammed on one cartridge. But don't expect accuracy or faithfulness.

Note to developers: if you're put to the task of porting a series of classic arcade games, at the very least do us a favor and boot up a copy of MAME to see how the original versions actually played. There's nothing more depressing than to expect accurate conversions of arcade games and get something that, even with the looks and sounds, don't play anything like what they're supposed to be mimicking. Paperboy / Rampage is among the latest GBA "dual pack" trend, but it's clear these two games were programmed on the quick and cheap by a team that wasn't familiar with how the games operated in the first place.

Paperboy, a true Atari Games classic, has been ported to systems in the past with varying levels of accuracy and success. I've played some seriously crappy renditions back in the day on the PC and Apple, so in this sense the Game Boy Advance isn't all that terrible, even if it fails to follow the original formula's design properly. But it is far from being accurate, and in some cases it's a broken port. The bike slowly drifts to the right as if the control calibration is out of whack, which means players continuously have to readjust the direction to avoid running into hazardous objects. This version also has several bugs that cause players to die instantly after recovering from a previous crash, and for some reason fails to tell players their score after a game over.

And the most hysterical issue comes from the sound. The development team throws as much of the original arcade's speech into the GBA version, but these samples play back almost randomly. Throw a paper into the box for some bonus points, and you'll hear "That's not my fault!" or "Sorry about that!"

Rampage was a 1985 Bally/Midway arcade hit that, admittedly, doesn't exactly stand the test of time 20 years later. But it's still great to be able to romp around a downtown city as a mega-sized hundred foot tall beast and take out a few buildings, and for that, the GBA version's a success. The huge downside is the fact that this version lacks the element that made the game awesome in the first place: three player destruction. This game doesn't feature link cable support, which, in turn, removes multi-monster mayhem from the design. Solo city destruction isn't nearly as fun or productive, and in fact takes away a lot of the little elements, like tag-team subway mashing, from the experience even though they're still left in the levels as if waiting for two or more players to take advantage of them.

This dual-pack can't hide the clues of a quick and dirty, and ultimately cheap development project. The front boxart uses screens from the arcade edition (showing three players for Rampage, for example), and the description of Rampage on the back of the box is text from the PlayStation version of Rampage: Universal Tour complete with talk of three non-existent characters and an alien invasion. Since the cartridge also lacks a battery save, high scores are lost forever once the system's turned off.

The Verdict

Paperboy/Rampage is a budget title, and that really shows in its quality control. The games are not accurate ports of the classics they're based on, only lifting their look and -- in only a few cases -- their sounds. Playable? Mildly. If you've never played the originals they won't hold your attention for more than a couple of plays, and for those familiar with the brands the flaws are too obvious to ignore.